It’s Time I Tell You Guys About the Time I Sharted at a PGA Event

So I do this thing where I caddy at pro-ams. I never worked as a caddy in high school or anything like that. Actually, the way I got caught up in this whole thing was by total accident.

I heard about this caddie app that was like uber for caddies. It piqued my interest because I thought it would be really cool to show up to my local muni and have some kid carry my clubs around the course. The app was in its infancy at the time and I put my email in for some kind of mailing list and totally forgot about it. Something like a year later, I get this random email which read something like “Caddies needed for the Honda Classic Pro-Am.” Well shit, I needed to see what this is all about.

The email was apparently to a distribution list of caddies who started working through the app. One of the founders of the app had contracted with the Honda Classic to provide all of the caddies for the pro am.

Now would be a good time to let you know, if you don’t already, that a pro am is basically a huge dog and pony show where the title sponsor gets to send a bunch of its employees, clients, and really fucking rich people to play golf with a PGA pro on the Wednesday before the PGA event starts. They get to go to a huge pairing party the night before where each group of 3 finds out which PGA player they’re playing with, they get great dining, hit on the range next to the pros, get their names announced on the first tee, the whole nine yards.

So anyway, it’s clear that I was accidentally added to this distribution because my email was somehow in their system. Well after reading the email, it turned out that not only would you get to walk behind the ropes with a pro, but they were gonna pay us two hundred fucking dollars and give us free weekly tickets to the Honda Classic, basically just to hang out on a PGA course. I couldn’t respond fast enough. I said I was interested and expected to get some response saying “hey, yeah, we don’t know who the fuck you are, so please kindly never respond again.”

Nope. A day later I got an email with instructions on where to park and what to wear. I had to be at PGA National at 5AM and wear a white polo with khaki shorts. I was living in Tampa at the time and it was in Palm Beach, which was about 3 and a half hours away.

So the next I think I knew, it was 1 o clock in the morning, I was driving across the state, pounding Dunkin Donuts cold brew coffee to stay awake. I had some granola bars and bananas and I was stoked. When I finally got to the course, I was in the wrong place. As it turns out, the PGA tour doesn’t exactly roll out the red carpet to Pro Am caddies and parking coincidentally was not directly at the course. So I turned around in the pitch black of Palm Beach retiree neighborhoods in search of a parking lot. It was getting close to 5 AM and after driving this far, there was no fucking way I was going to miss this opportunity.

So I saw a sign that said “Media Lot” and I decided to follow that in out of desperation. I figured if I couldn’t park there, someone would stop me. So I park and get on the shuttle. As I step on, it’s all cameramen and local newscasters. I couldn’t look more out of place, but weirdly, no one said anything. We pull in right to the clubhouse and its very clear that I am not where I’m supposed to be. So I book it over to where I see spotlights of the driving range. It’s still pitch black and there’s a bullpen of caddies. After a little while, we see a small group of 10 people or so walking towards the range. We realize its a few cops, a few photographers, a couple of guys who obviously do something in the golf industry, and in the middle, Tiger Woods.

A little piece of trivia is that Tiger is always the first tee time out for pro ams and he’s usually the first on the range. This was the start of Tiger’s 2018 PGA season, so for a pro-am, we knew there would be big crowds just to see him.

As I said, I basically had to stand in a little bull pen. We just waited from 5AM until each person’s name got called to go out with a group. If you didn’t walk up after your name was called, they would skip you and go on to the next person, so I was dialed in. As the hours started going by, I got a little worried. I figured I’d get out by 9, walk my loop and be drinking an overpriced beer by 2PM. Fuck was I wrong. I got my tee time for 11:22. I was with a young pro and my amateur was a manager of one of the highest earning Honda dealerships in Texas.

Now I must remind you that my day had started very fucking early and the fuel I used to get me across the state of Florida was a shitload of coffee and some granola bars. I hadn’t had a chance to hit the bathroom that day for fear of missing my name being called, and on the first tee box, I felt a little grumble in my stomach. Nothing big, I thought “I’ll just clench my cheeks and enjoy the day.”

For a while, I was pretty proud of myself. I gave some good distances, cracked a few good jokes, and read a few putts. The other guys I was caddying with were long time caddies at big time clubs and they were none the wiser that it was my first loop, or that I had a septic tank’s worth of dookie in my colon. Everything was fine until the 15th hole. It was at that moment when I realized I had carried this poop baby to term.

Now I don’t pretend to be a big science guy, but in my mind, I see my colon as a balloon that inflates with poops and farts. Logically, if you get rid of the farts, you’ll still have the poop, but at least some of the pressure would be released. So, I decided to put this theory in practice and rip a little fart. As I did this, something happened that I can only describe with a metaphor. Have you ever tried to open a door with a dog who really wants to get outside? So you kind of put your knee up and you can kind of stop the dog between your knee and the door frame? Well when that happens, you can grab the dog and put the pup back inside.

Well, you can’t do that with a shart. With a shart, it gets cut and what’s out of your proverbial door is already out. That’s what happened to me. And immediately I cursed whoever the fuck decided our caddy uniform would be khaki shorts. Why couldn’t the uniform be a nice hue of hazelnut or maybe an espresso brown color? I was fucking terrified. I knew I had a shit stain on my pants, but with a small crowd watching, a PGA pro, and my pro am group, I couldn’t dare check my ass for skid marks. I had to create a diversion.

I saw my opportunity. I would put my bag down near a small drainage area where my player’s ball was, then walk back to a sprinkler head to walk off the distance. In this time, I would fake a slip and fall into the muddy grass and boom, poop stain is covered. I know this sounds crazy, but I’m desperate.

I stage the fall, and boom.“Are you okay?” I said I was fine, and I looked back and said “ah, damn, I got some mud on me.” No one could have cared less. We finished the next few holes and settled up. I had a pile of fresh 20s in my wallet, but I still had to shit, and I still had shitty underwear, but here’s where it gets tricky. Because I was caddying, I was inside the “players only” area. No one really looks at credentials until to you actually try to gain access to the clubhouse or a locker room or something. So if I left the player’s area, I would need credentials to get back in and I definitely couldn’t leave because I needed access to the buses that took me to the media lot.

So here was my predicament. Do I leave the credentialed area and risk not getting a ride back to my car, which I wasn’t exactly sure of where it was so I can go to one of the public bathrooms? Or do I try to bribe someone to let me into a credentialed bathroom and risk getting kicked out of the players area? I walked up to a security guard blocking the clubhouse’s entrance and told him a little bit of my issue. I could tell he was slightly entertained, but didn’t feel like losing his job by letting me in. After all, as I was standing there, Adam Scott had already said “excuse me” to me so I would move for him to get inside. So I took out my wallet, showed him that it had my license and cash in it and I told him I would let him hold my wallet as collateral and give him $40 if he let me go straight to the bathroom for 5 minutes.

Thankfully, he obliged. I went straight to the bathroom and sat down. Now this is more information than I ever wanted to say, much less put on the internet, but as I took care of my business, I felt sweet relief and I looked down to see my boxers around my ankles….

With no shit stain. As it turns out I hadn’t shit my pants at all. It was just a really aggressive fart and I staged a fall into the mud for literally no reason at all. I finished up and left without a hitch. Good times.

Oh, and that whole thing about how I caddy pro-ams frequently, yeah, just call the tournament office for whatever tournament is near you and tell them you’re a caddy and wanted to see if they need any for the pro am. If you can do it, you’ll get anywhere from $100-$300, usually free tickets, and sometimes you can make some pretty good connections. I’ve done it for quite a few tournaments now.